A man on Friday was arrested on a felony charge of obstruction of justice and a misdemeanor charge of harassment. Azhar Hussain, an assistant professor at Indiana State University, allegedly falsified claims of anti-Islamic threats. He even reported an attack that never happened, police said.

Earlier this month, an African American man pled guilty to posing as a white supremacist and "mailing threatening communications" to other minority residents in Knoxville, according to authorities. Justin Lamar Coleman was charged with mailing six hostile letters describing violent and disturbing acts to local African Americans from last July through December.

Advertisement

Related Content

These incidents are indicative of a larger problem - false reports can waste time and valuable resources, while detracting from the legitimacy of real hate crimes. They're also nearly impossible to quantify, since the FBI keeps no record of them.

But a quick Google search reveals dozens, if not more, fictitious accounts of hate crimes that are widely accepted as truth - even after they've been disproven.

On April 9, a North Carolina man was arrested after allegedly vandalizing and setting fire to an Indian-owned grocery store in Charlotte. Curtis Flournoy, an African American, left behind a racist letter signed "White America."

“A note was also left at the scene near the door that stated the suspect did not want any refugee business owners and that they would torture the owner if they did not leave and go back to where they came from,” Charlotte-Mecklenberg police told WBTV.

Database FakeHateCrimes.org keeps a running tally of false reports, but many fraudulent cases that remain unsolved are likely to slip through the cracks.

"The motivations are, first of all, they're usually trying to solve some personal problem," forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz told Fox News earlier this week. "The way they try to solve it typically involves their seeking attention for themselves or their appearing to be the victim, because they want the benefits of the victim role."

Psychiatrist and author Judith Orloff says people who embody "victim roles" fail to take responsibility for their actions and look to others for affirmation.

"People are always against them, the reason for their unhappiness," she explained. "They portray themselves as unfortunates who demand rescuing."

In the age of social media, that affirmation - often followed by outrage - is only a click away. In many cases, supporting evidence isn't needed.

Prior to the 2016 election, a Delaware woman posted on Facebook that “four males, all of whom were Caucasian" shouted racial slurs and threatened to shoot her during an altercation at a gas station. She claimed they voiced praise for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

"Charges were filed...fugitives were caught," Ashley Boyer wrote in a now-deleted post on the social media site. Police in Smyrna debunked the story, confirming that no reports related to the incident were filed and the alleged victim hadn't contacted them.

Last November, a University of Louisiana at Lafayette student told police that two white men ripped off her hijab inside a campus building. Twenty-four hours later, she redacted the story.

A 58-year-old man from New Jersey was charged with vandalizing several homes and vehicles in Philadelphia following the November election. William Tucker, an African American, spray-painted racial slurs on cars, walls and storefronts.

The same month, a 20-year-old Massachusetts man admitted to police that his tale of being approached by two white men who proclaimed it's "Trump country now" never happened.

In March, a New York man was charged with falsely reporting an incident after painting three swastikas on his home. Andrew King, 54, told police his residence was vandalized.

The toppling of gravestones at a Brooklyn cemetery led to outcries of anti-Semitism earlier this year, but an investigation led by the NYPD concluded that poor maintenance and erosion - not vandals - were the culprits.

Similar cases are popping up across the nation, leaving some questioning why we're so quick to believe a story before we've looked at the facts.

In an age of information overload, how can one learn to separate truth from fiction?

According to Dietz, more Americans are forgoing logic for emotional reason, a cognitive process in which a person concludes that his or her emotional reaction proves something to be true, despite evidence to the contrary.

"We have a population less prepared to critically evaluate information they receive," Dietz said. "There was a time in which the institutions that dominated and provided social control were the church and the law and educational systems. But I think that has shifted. All provide the kind of information that aren't subject to scrutiny, that aren't fact-checked, that build on emotion rather than reason, and this results in the dumbing-down of the consumer."